Knock knock…

Throughout history mankind has come up with some pretty amazing combinations. Take Ancient Rome for example: Emperor Nero one day had a whim for ice mixed with fruit toppings. This simple combination of two seemingly unrelated products prompted the slow and steady innovation that eventually concluded in ice-cream as we know it today! From two great ideas was born a third, and so too the legacy of another ingenious invention that’s stood the test of time.

LEGO has been a household name since the 1950’s and people thought LEGO simply couldn’t get any better. Then one day this all changed when LEGO teamed up with Traveller’s Tales and Star Wars! The ultimate in gaming combinations, LEGO Star Wars hit the world by storm with its drop-in/drop-out co-op and a multitude of playable characters, and, in my humble not-so-nearly-unbiased opinion, became one of the greatest action game crossovers of all time, ever. Period. Stat. Q.E.D.

Growing from their success with Star Wars, in 2008 LEGO teamed up with two other undeniably manly franchises of the modern era: Batman and Indiana Jones. Both followed the same recipe of success as LEGO Star Wars but added tweaks to the games which defined each in its own unique style. Thanks to LEGO’s choice of hardcore protagonists, manly men the world over could once again unabashedly play with lego bricks and invite their friends over for rugby and LEGO without any pretenses. Batman is hardcore, Indiana Jones is hardcore, and Star Wars is simply AWESOME. I am a man. I own a LEGO Star Wars collection and have a cabinet full of them. There is no shame in this.

Building on (ahem) from the success of the previous franchise crossovers, LEGO has now ventured into a realm a little more kid-friendly and appealing to the current generation. Unlike its predecessors, the new LEGO Harry Potter franchise is as current and mainstream as you can get, but my main concern with this strategy is that it’s still just going to feel like “another LEGO clone.” Besides, Harry Potter is naff enough to make LEGO naff, and I’m not really sure how much of the success of the previous LEGO games can be attributed to the kind of audience that Harry Potter appeals to.

Who’s there?

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1 - 4 (aka LEGO Harry Potter) didn’t really strike me as an appealing LEGO game. It’s based on a book written by an Enid Blyton-wannabe which chronicles the misadventures of a group of snotty-nosed British kids that run around casting spells and solving pretty pointless mysteries. You can probably tell I’m not a fan of Harry, so you can rest-assured that if LEGO Harry Potter still manages to score a good rating, it has to be a good game! I’m also very manly, so to be willingly subjected to a naff game can only mean that the game itself is quite good and actually not altogether naff at all.

LEGO Harry Potter retells the story of Harry and his friends in wizardry through their first four years at Hogwarts. The storyline starts at Philosopher’s Stone and crosses through Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban, finishing with Goblet of Fire.

LEGO Harry Potter sticks to the tried-and-tested winning formula of the past LEGO games, but also introduces a few new tweaks to the gameplay. There’s still the usual collect and explore aspect but significantly the “neutral zone” in between levels is now much bigger and more relevant to the progression of the overall story. Now you actually have to travel through Hogwarts in between levels and attend classes! It does a nice job of mixing a sense of freedom with the linearity of the storyline - as you travel through Hogwarts you can do various little puzzles to earn more studs, go shopping for more spells and outfits, or attend your classes to unlock spells. If you’re familiar with the series you’ll recognise the storyline stays true to the books and it is interspersed with loads of humourous cutscenes. The free-roaming feel of meandering through Hogwarts sometimes left me a little unaware of when I was actually progressing through a story level and when I was still just arbitrarily venturing through Hogwarts - I’m still not sure if this is a good thing.

Harry!

The most significant change to gameplay is undoubtedly the introduction of magic. Most characters are able to cast various spells, each with their own unique effects and available via a spell wheel. Spells are critical to overcome challenges which usually require a specific spell to be defeated and this is where the value of attending Hogwarts classes becomes apparent, as the player will get to learn (unlock) these spells and how to use them. Another interesting feature is potion-making - where players will need to find the right ingredients to brew potions in order to conclude certain levels. In particular, the Polyjuice Potion is LEGO Harry Potter’s way of allowing players to choose which characters to play by polymorphing into them with the aid of the potion!

Added to the mix are “student in peril” side missions and some Hogwarts-centric distractions, including living portraits that interact with the player, flying brooms and controllable familiars (such as Scabbers the rat). Anecdote: a fond characteristic of LEGO games is the personalities that come through the LEGO characters. In LEGO Harry Potter, you can enjoy these character nuances, for example, when they attempt to fly a broom - some are hopeless at it and end up doing more harm to themselves while others are deft and able to ride the broom skillfully. There’s several examples of this level of attention to detail and it makes LEGO Harry Potter feel like a quality product developed by people that care about the finer details.

Harry who?

One benefit of the Harry Potter world is that where’s there’s magic the typical boundaries of reality are blurred and this translates really well into pushing the limits of the game and introducing quirky puzzles and adventures. An example of this is rebuilding a broken magic closet to obtain ear-muffs in order to tolerate the Mandrake Root’s screeching while you carry the cacophonic Root past stunned students and over to a glass cabinet, shattering it with the high-pitched shrieking to obtain a key inside.

LEGO Harry Potter has also done away with the “one screen fits all” approach of earlier LEGO games, and instead incorporated a splitscreen technology which permits characters to split up from each other and roam freely and separately. This splitscreen technology will merge quite fluidly into a single screen when both players are near enough to each other, ala previous LEGO titles. Another noticeable change is in the way that the story is played out - in LEGO Harry Potter you have no option but to play through the story; other LEGO titles gave players the option of which Episode to play at any time but with LEGO Harry Potter there is no option to choose which chapter or book, and this makes sense since half the appeal of Harry’s adventures is following his growing up and learning in Hogwarts.

An albeit underplayed feature in LEGO Harry Potter is the bonus building levels, where you can take on the role of a LEGO builder and build your own levels to explore. This promises a lot of potential but I found very little desire to tackle the building levels when there was still so much of the game to play!

Harry up and play this game!

LEGO Harry Potter doesn’t seem to do quite enough to escape the “LEGO legacy.” Don’t get me wrong, the “LEGO legacy” isn’t nearly a bad thing because it’s proven to be a winning formula, but there is a strong sense that if you’ve played one LEGO game, you’ve played them all. Although in Harry’s defence, the introduction of a spell wheel and potions does liven up the experience a bit. Perhaps it’s because of this familiarity that the game seems to start off slowly - a lot of the time is spent exploring Hogwarts and getting used to the way things work with magic, and you don’t actually get to fight anything for ages. In fact you are mostly fighting imps, flying toilets, spiders, plants, or simply NOTHING in the first year, and that does make for a very tame beginning.

Overall, Lego Harry Potter: Years 1 - 4 is still as much fun as any of the recent LEGO titles and is probably going to appeal to the current generation of kids more than the other titles do. The puzzles are still challenging enough to keep most adults guessing, but I’m just not so sure how many adults would want to play a Harry Potter game (having said that, it’s just like the other LEGO games for all the same good reasons). Notwithstanding the periods of relative calm (boredom?) while roaming around Hogwarts, the game is a clean and thoroughly entertaining return romp into the world of LEGO, except of course that this time the world is full of spells and toads and magic and mystery. Most unfortunately for Harry, he will - for the time being at least - have to get used to living in the towering shadows of his much more mature uncles - Indy, Luke and Bruce - but given time and a healthy bout of puberty even Harry should outgrow his naff reputation and stake his own indelible mark on the LEGO series.

The Good: Good clean fun; typical LEGO humour; improvements on the original winning formula.

The Bad: Harry Potter still feels a bit naff; periods of slowness through Hogwarts can be frustrating.

Purchase: